ABSTRACT
This book has aimed to explore and compare three generations of women’s lived experiences as mothers in China. It has taken a feminist position that emphasises creating a concrete and historical understanding of what it means to be a mother across generations. Such an approach can demonstrate that gender is not immutable and that motherhood is not isolated from other social domains. Methodologically, this has entailed understanding mothering experiences as: (1) a part of everyday life that connects women’s different roles and practices; (2) embedded within women’s whole life trajectories; (3) constitutive of and constituted by the generational transmission process; and (4) situated within a specific historical time period. The three analytical chapters reflect this complex way of investigating and comparing mothers’ experiences, including women’s growing-up experiences, mothering experiences in combination with women’s other roles and practices (e.g. daughter-in-law, wife or female worker), and intergenerational transmission. In this concluding chapter, I summarise the findings from these three chapters before reflecting on my application of some western concepts in analysing Chinese mothers’ experiences. Then the main contributions of the book are summarised, including how we should view women’s agency within contextual constraints and how we should design social policies that embrace women’s agency. Finally, the author’s personal evolution of being a mother alongside this research work will be reflected upon.
